Slide Show: In the Caves of the Nuba

The Nuba people of southern Sudan live among a series of stone massifs west of the Blue Nile. It is said that there are ninety-nine tribes, with scores of languages between them—but they are culturally united. Nubans regard themselves as the descendants of the Nubians, the most ancient indigenous people of the region. They have been fighting the Islamist military regime in Khartoum off and on for three decades. The first war, as they call it, ended after a 2005 U.N.-brokered peace agreement, and, after a referendum, statehood for South Sudan. The Nuba were left out of the independence deal. War broke out again soon after.

Ten months on, tens of thousands of Nubans have left their villages and towns to live in caves and crevasses in the rocky mountain massifs. (I shot pictures, above, and videos, below, on a reporting trip there this week.) Khartoum’s Sukhoi and MiG jet fighters and Antonov warplanes fly daily sorties overhead, bombing frequently. Food is becoming scarce, as these people have not been able to plant their fields; there is a risk of famine with the new rainy season that begins in May. Tens of thousands more have fled south, to dank and dry brush forests. And in the Nuba Mountains, one of the oldest spots on earth, Africa’s newest war seems already to have begun.

Update: On Tuesday, President Obama authorized twenty-six million dollars in emergency humanitarian aid for the estimated two hundred and fifty thousand Sudanese that are in imminent danger of starvation in South Kordofan (where the Nuba Mountains are located) and the adjacent state of Blue Nile. The problem will be getting food to the affected people, such as those living in the Nuba caves. The military regime in Khartoum has refused to allow access to international humanitarian agencies.

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